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My view of everything changed after I didn’t have any debts. It changed in ways that took me a while and some reflection to really understand and to be able to write them out on paper, even though I could feel the change pretty quickly. I took several months to really let everything sink in. Here’s what I experienced realizing I had a more complete financial freedom than ever before. I still I wouldn’t have absolute financial freedom until I no longer needed to work for someone, but for now this was a huge life upgrade. Here are 5 definite things that changed for me by getting out of debt.

1) I stopped making decisions from a place of fear and necessity.

2) I became less willing to put up with bullshit as I no longer needed to operate from a place of financial dis empowerment.

“I don’t want to do that, and since I don’t need the money, I’m not going to do that” Work a holiday. This was actually a problem for me since I still needed a job but felt like I didn’t need to be pushed on at said job.

3) The speed at which I could complete projects was faster than it had ever before (Due to free cash flow).

5) I felt like I was moving forward instead of just maintaining my place in life.

Little stuff like auto repairs I had been putting off got fixed, little details around the house got repaired-door trim walls painted, door knobs fixed, etc. I was able to finally buy new t-shirts (At a discount store of course), shoes, and underwear (Yeah, I said underwear. no not used). I bought some new used tools that allowed me to make and repair other items I had been putting off. With each opportunity I seized, more and more became available. Will my new found cash flow, I realized I could start making more money. I’m not trying to sound like a Rockefeller and I’m not trying to brag. I still had a long way to go financially. This was just my experience of how money started to change.

6) Another unexpected revelation was that I wasn’t seeing linear growth in any of the previously mentioned areas.

Some areas were growing exponentially, at least initially. All of the major areas seemed to be amplified. I got a new home gym-used of course that allowed me to get “healthier” workouts. I was able to connect with people over some low cost activities. I was able to start investing and finding ways to make more money, send that money back into other projects that had been neglected, and speed thing up even more, like a feedback loop. I was able to give back to the people that had helped me along this journey. I didn’t feel vulnerable anymore financially and this made me feel strong enough to start fixing some of the holes in the lives of people close to me, financially and otherwise. I was able to really launch my healthy, wealthy, and wise philosophy significantly further and at a speed greater than before.

All of this isn’t to brag, quite the opposite. I want to peel back the curtain on the ways your life can be different and reassure you that the journey is worth the pay out, because the road is difficult and longer than I’d like.

The original post on DIY money saving tips should have already saved you about $2000/yr on your energy costs. If that wasn’t enough, here are 10 more ways to start putting a serious dent in some of life’s operational costs. With that in mind, here’s a list of things you can get crackin’ on today to realize some solid savings asap. Many of them won’t even cost you anything up front, others require a very small cost to begin to save on energy.

Without further delay lets save some money on energy costs now!

1) Switch to drip irrigation.

If you can put Legos together, you can install drip irrigation. It uses dramatically less water than traditional sprinkles and bubblers without wasting as much water to evaporation. Thy work using low water pressure to drip water onto the soil and wet it over time instead of trying to flood it. Because of this, less water is wasted to evaporation and run off, effectively getting the water right where you want it.

2) Clean the coils on your fridge.

Cost: $0.00. If you’re like most people, you’ve never ever cleaned the coils on your fridge, and chances are good that neither did the person before you. So what the hell are the “coils”I speak of? Anything that cools air, has coils, and they need to be cleaned, whether it’s your car, air conditioner, or fridge. The coils are usually located on the bottom or the back of your fridge. Over time, they get coated with dust, lint, and dirt. This lowers the efficiency because they don’t transfer heat to the outside air as well. For a fridge, I’d simply unplug it, roll it away from the wall, vacuum out the lint, and maybe wipe it down with a rag or paper towel. It doesn’t need to be clean enough to eat off of, just relatively gunk free.

3) Turn the temp on your fridge and freezer to the Min allowable amount.

Cost: $0.00. Have ever noticed that there is a temperature setting ranging from cold to colder for your fridge and freezer? Well you can adjust this to be just a little bit less cool. This makes your fridge work a little less hard and you save the extra energy that it no longer needs. If you can turn a knob, you can save some money here.

4) Make a rain water collection system to water your yard and garden.

Cost: $50-150. Awe the joy of growing things: Plants, lawns, trees, gardens; all ripe with green foliage, flowers, shade, and a pleasant habitat to boot. Like all life, they need water but that doesn’t mean I need to keep paying so much for it. After all, it literally falls from the sky when it rains. That’s when I figured, why not collect it from my gutter system and just save it for a sunny day when my plants need water. I found a few decorative rain collection barrels at a liquidation store and have been using them for this ever since. If you don’t care as much about the appearance, you can just use a couple of food grade 55 gallon plastic barrels, paint the outside of them and pat yourself on the back. I’ve found several of these on craigslist. Pour in a bit of dish soap to keep mosquitoes from laying eggs in them though.

5) Turn up you hot water heater as the weather outside begins to get warmer.

Cost: $0.00. Also, anytime, I’m going out of town, I’ll set this on the vacation setting. It’s typically labeled on the red dial. If not, I’ll just set it to low. No point in heating water if I’m not even going to be there.

6) Mulch anything that needs to be watered.

Cost: $0-$10. Spread mulch around anything you water, from garden plants, to trees, to flowers. This will not only give the soil, and thus the water, some insulation from the suns hydro evaporating rays, it will create a welcome habitat for beneficial soil organisms like worms. All this while lowering the frequency with which you need to water and saving you some water mullah on your next bill.

7) Electric Water heater timer.

If you live in a cold climate this applies especially to you. You may need to evaluate your hot water usage schedule, but if you’re like most people, you probably use hot water in the morning, and then not again until the evening. All this time in between, all day and all night, your water heater is still burning electricity to keep 40-50 gallons of water hot for you. With a hot water heater timer, you can have it turn off and then back on again, only just before you need it. These are about $40 buck on amazon and you may need to have someone install it if you’re not up to it. Better yet, find a friend who is up to it and help them with something they need in exchange for installing it. Even so, it should start recouping some savings within a year. While you’re at it you could…….

8) Install a Water heater insulation blanket.

A hot water insulation blanket is simply an insulated blanket that helps hold heat into the water heater. The less heat that escapes, the less energy it takes to maintain the water temperature.

9) Check your attic insulation.

Some homes had more lax building codes for insulation. Others had none at all, as was the case with mine. If you see that the insulation has fallen away or looks a little thin, you may see an improvement from simply fixing it. Most of the improvements you’ll see here come from fixing insulation “failures” which can just kind of happen over time.

10) Replace old refrigerators and freezers with newer craigslist models.

I am not recommending that you run out any replace your fridge just to replace it, but if your fridge is one of the old 80’s or 90’s ones, you could see a big improvement in efficiency by upgrading to one newer than 2005. Again, if you just go to home depot and spend $1200 on a new fridge, it’ll be 20 years before you recoup your costs by saving on electricity. So what am I proposing? Go on craigslist and find a new-ish model that someone is upgrading. You should be able to do this for much less than 1/3 the cost of a new one. Some people will even deliver if you offer them an extra $20 or $30.

Do you know what’s awesome about frugality? You can go out this weekend, put in some elbow grease and start saving some money immediately for as long as you own your house or rent your apartment. In my mind saving $100 a month is just as good as, if not better than making $100 a month because you’ll never have to work for that savings again. You just get it for the rest of your life. It’s a one-time effort that keeps paying out. In contrast, most people on a salary can’t just go out and start making more money instantly. One of the biggest costs in any home budget is energy consumption. Below is a list of 17 items I have personally tested and found to work extremely well at saving me money. In my case it cut my utility costs 30% after I put everything into effect. This put me into the bottom 10% of all energy consumers for my location in Phoenix Arizona. How do I know this? My electrical company sent me a notice to tell me so (Insert SRP bill). So I know this stuff works. It’s not theoretical, and for about an hour or two of work, it can save you real money over the course of a year. Without further ado, let’s save some money! Organize from highest to lowest.

1) Window shade screens in the summer. Let light in in the winter.

This is one of the most underrated ways to reduce your cooling bill in the summer. Sunlight carries a lot more heat than you think, especially when it shines through a giant magnifying glass that is your window. In the winter you can capitalize on this same principle by letting in light, and thus heat from East, West, and South Facing windows. A word of caution though; don’t go paying a company $400 to set up and install sun shades. You’ll spend a long time trying to recoup your costs on that. Windows are fairly standard sizes and with a little bit of patience you can either find one that’s already made for your window size on Craigslist, a used building supply store, or just make one yourself using anyone of these kits (link to kits). I measured mine and bought a few window shades at my local USED building supply store (Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore) for about $7 total. All of the hot areas of my house cooled down dramatically and my air conditioner didn’t have to run as long to cool down these rooms, so it could cycle off more often. Here’s how it works: Summer-Focus on shading the East and West windows first. Winter-Remove shades, open blinds and curtains in the daytime to let as much light as possible in to your East, West, and South facing windows.

Think of your house like a giant insulated cooler. If you crack the lid a little bit and start trying to blow cold or warm air into it, you will have to work a lot harder to keep it warm or cold than you would it the lid was closed and sealed shut. This is how your home’s air conditioner or heater works as well. All those tiny cracks in doors, windows, outlets, ducts, light fixtures, etc. add up. In fact they add up to a hole about the size of a basketball on the average house. Every time hot or cold air comes in from these cracks, your air conditioner or heater has to work harder to constantly cool or heat this new outside air. The solution is simple and takes about an hour or so. Get some weatherized caulking, remove the outlet(Turn the power off first) and duct covers, seal the gaps around the edges where the box meets the sheetrock. Additionally, check the weather stripping on the bottom and edges of your doors and windows. If you can see light through them, air is passing through. You can buy weather stripping for cheap at any home store in your area. It’s fairly easy to install. I promise.

3) Clean the coils on your AC condenser and heat pump. Cost: several gallons of water.

This is one that I do several times a summer to keep my A/C working properly through our dusty summers here in Phoenix, Az. It fast, simple, very effective, and if you’ve never done it, you’re in for a pleasant increase in the form of much cooler air. I was fairly surprised at the difference in air temperature I saw once I did this. This will work on heaters that use a heat pump style system as well. A word of caution here: You will want to make sure the A/C quick disconnect is turned off and there is no power going to the unit. A second word of caution here: Don’t spray your coils with maximum pressure. It will bend and damage them. You simply need a gentle stream to wash the dirt and grim out. I like to start at the top and work my way down. Here’s a youtube video that may help get you up to speed.

4) Change your air filter monthly during heavy use. Cost: $2-$5.

I’m embarrassed to tell you that there was a time I never changed my air filter. By the time I located it, it was severely coated in dirt, hair, dust and crud to the point that air could barely pass through it. This greatly restricted the flow and effectiveness of my AC unit. You don’t ever want your filter to look like that. Change it monthly during times of heavy use. That’s all it takes.

Try this exercise out to see if your door seals have leakage points. Have a friend shine a flashlight around the closed front or rear door while you stand inside the house (If it’s sunny out you may be able to simply do this on your own without the flash light). If you can see light shining through any gaps, then air is also leaking in or out. This may not seem like a big deal since the gaps are so small, but your heating or cooling system has to work harder than you think to adjust to this, costing you well-earned heat or cooling dollars.

6) Tune your Heat/AC registers. Cost: $0.00.

Don’t shy away thinking that this is some highly technical process. Like many things in life, you can make it as simple or complicated as you choose. The idea is that you want to balance the amount of airflow between your whole house. For example, let’s say it’s summer time. You have one room that’s constantly hot. You look at the register (the vent) and you notice that it doesn’t blow quite as hard as the other registers. Conversely, you also have a room that is more than cool enough and seems like a wind tunnel when you’re in it. Adjust the vent in that room to slow the volume of air going into it. This will create a surplus of cool air to share with the other register that isn’t quite flowing enough. Viola, you should notice a small increase in the output of all the other ducts/vents on the line. Try this in every room to find the perfect balance for each area. Just don’t close any registers completely, this causes a lot of back pressure and most professionals advise against it because occasionally, it will cause duct to come loose in older homes.

7) Time your heat/AC with the easiest time of the day for it to work.

Then just maintain that temperature. Cost: Free if you have a programmable thermostat. $20-$40 if you don’t. Think about your air conditioner or heater like a car trying to go up a steep hill. If you get up some momentum before the hill (Cooling in the early morning hours in summer or heating in the afternoon hours if it’s winter), it’s easier for your unit to keep up once it gets hot(afternoon in summer) or cold(night time in the winter). I like to use a programmable thermostat to tell my heater or air conditioner to get up some momentum during the appropriate part of the day. Then it can just coast when the more challenging part of the day comes.